Composing Effective Teams through Team Dating

Abstract

Previous research showed that short initial interaction in dyads accurately predicts future relation development. The paper extends these results from dyads to teams and demonstrates that data collected from short initial contacts (reciprocal relational preferences) are a sound basis for designing effective teams. In the approach we propose, potential team members have short initial contacts (popularly known as ‘speed dating’) and we use the information on interpersonal evaluations to create teams by maximizing the number of reciprocal relational preferences within a team. In a sample of 76 teams (N = 378, 36 attribute-based teams and 40 team-dating teams), we show that teams formed based on relational data are more effective than teams formed by maximizing within team diversity (gender and nationality). Team-dating teams show a better teamwork quality and develop more complex collective knowledge structures compared with attribute-based teams.